Master of Arts in Process-Oriented Facilitation and Conflict Studies

Accredited by the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools. The Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools is recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation.

Have questions? Read below for more details about the MAPOF program and then sign up for an information session with our Outreach and Admissions Coordinator.

Program Overview

The Master of Arts in Process-Oriented Facilitation and Conflict Studies teaches students to facilitate inner psychology and world problems. Our graduates work in leadership, organizations, counseling, coaching, and as mediators and facilitators in community and global contexts. Our vision is to teach people how to relate to themselves and each other, even amongst difficult conflicts, polarities, and moods. Our experienced faculty, including founders Arny and Amy Mindell, have expertise ranging from depth psychology to large organizational consulting to war zones, and offer students unique training in methods for working with the interconnectivity of personal problems and world problems.

This program teaches Deep Democracy methods. These are methods for working with the diverse range of how people and groups communicate. Some people are verbal, others express themselves through their body, deep feeling states, and dreams. We train students to the deep democracy of how people are expressing themselves, so people feel deeply understood. Feeling understood is important, and helps build sustainable structural solutions.

The MAPOF Program teaches the competencies of the International Association of Process-Oriented Psychology (IAPOP), the International Association of Facilitators (IAF), and the International Coaching Federation (ICF).

Our integrative program covers key Processwork skill areas required to support a process-oriented approach: Innerwork, Dreambody work, Organizations and Worldwork, Relationships, and States of Consciousness. We do not offer a clinical licensure track, although some of our students choose to obtain licenses concurrently or after completing our program. This program ensures that the graduate gains both the specific set of facilitation skills and the personal development necessary to embody these skills.

Students who meet the requirements of our degree will be awarded a Master of Arts in Process-Oriented Facilitation and Conflict Studies. Information about program performance and gainful employment can be found here, MAPOF program performance.

Program Objectives

The MAPOF program objectives are designed to prepare students with skills and knowledge from the field of community psychology for vocational roles including management.

At the end of the MAPOF program, graduates will be able to:

Demonstrate foundational skills and knowledge in facilitating challenging situations for individuals, relationships, and groups in order to generate sustainable solutions.

Demonstrate foundational process-oriented skills and knowledge to address conflicts and life challenges.

Use skills and knowledge to support individuals and communities through change processes in order to cultivate increased human potential.

Use self-awareness techniques to work with one’s own difficult states, moods, biases, and emotions in order to stay centred and productive in stressful or high-tension contexts including change and conflict.

Describe and understand the Processwork approach to facilitation and conflict studies, and how it relates to other approaches.

Demonstrate sound knowledge of ethical and professional conduct including professional collaboration and working in the context of a larger system.

In addition, we have identified four core skills that are continually emphasized in the MAPOF program, which include:

The ability to value and utilize the diversity of human experience: Ability to recognize, appreciate, and help others to value all aspects and levels of experience in the facilitation of individual development, productive group processes, and conflict resolution.

Social perceptiveness: Use of a range of techniques to explore all aspects of experience, including non-verbal and subtle signals, and make them useful to individuals, small groups, organizations, and communities.

The ability to transform disturbing experiences into productive solutions: Ability to engage with the clients’ and one’s own less known, disturbing, or marginalized experiences, and make that knowledge available as a resource for the development of new behaviors and sustainable resolutions.

Leadership: Use of self-awareness techniques and self-regulation techniques to model and create effective communication and teamwork.

Theoretical Emphasis

The MAPOF program is based on the fundamental insight that human change processes operate across multiple levels of experience – including psychological, interpersonal and group levels – and that competency with each of these levels supports effective facilitation across the spectrum. Accordingly we train facilitators to be able to facilitate the process of change in different contexts, from individual work to relationships and groups. For example, students learn to work with body signals as well as language signals. Students learn to read group behavior as well as individual behavior within that group. Aspects of individual work like unfolding the significance of accidents or hopes, dreams and fears are used in the facilitation of groups and organizations. Facilitators learn how to work with less-known signals like organizational atmosphere and gossip to reveal their impact and meaning for individuals and for the group.

The theoretical viewpoint underlying the program’s structure is that to learn a process approach to facilitation, it is essential to be able to follow a process on individual, relationship, and group levels of experience. Even though students may have a primary interest in individual counseling work, for example, we know that learning how to work on a group level allows graduates to more effectively facilitate individual experiences related to group behaviors, and vice versa. Facilitators trained in the MAPOF program are able to switch between these levels with fluidity. Our experience shows that the process-oriented perspective of working on multiple levels of an experience gives great insight and relief to persons and groups. It creates the empowering viewpoint that personal and group problems have a kind of order to them that can be understood and facilitated.

Length and Residency Requirements

The program is two years in duration and is built on six residencies, each of two weeks length.

The residencies combine theoretical and experiential learning and occur in Oregon, primarily at the Process Work Institute. Some classes are held off-campus in the surrounding vicinity, for example the Oregon coast. The off-campus components allow students to participate directly in facilitation workshops on real life issues. It is required that students stay in housing together during these off-campus activities, as part of the relationship facilitation aspect of the program.

Approximately 75% or above of the course of study is offered through the residencies, with preparation and study required before and after for each residency. Approximately 25% or less of the classes are held online via video and audio webinar or video and audio chat. This blended model of residential learning and distance learning allows students to engage in multiple ways and enhances learning for different styles of learners.

Practicum Training

The MAPOF program provides students with practicum opportunities during their second year. PWI sponsors the River’s Way Clinic that enables students living in Oregon to participate in facilitation with clients. The focus of the clinic is on the facilitation of relationships. This includes couple relationships, family relationships, and business and community relationships. We will also work with individual clients on their relationship issues in various parts of their lives including home and work, and on their internal relationship conflicts between various internal polarities. There will also be training in working with trauma as so many relationship conflicts remain frozen because of unprocessed trauma. The facilitation program will train students how to collaborate with other disciplines, for example how to understand when a client can’t participate in a facilitation model and needs collaboration with psychotherapy and other healing modalities.

Students not living in Oregon will participate in practicums in their home area and receive facilitation supervision from both field supervisors and PWI faculty.

Mentorship

Personal interaction and the relationship between mentor and trainee is a cornerstone of the program. Trainees are offered group and personal facilitation training sessions. These include individual faculty student sessions each quarter, regular meeting with an advisor, and regular meetings with a supervisor.

Learning in Community

Trainees learn in a cohort, studying in residences together that are facilitated by the PWI faculty. A learning community model of education accelerates the learning process through the rich exchange of experience and ideas in relationship and community. The peer network of international learners continues to work together through online learning, peer groups, and teleconferencing between residencies.

Residencies provide trainees with an opportunity to learn with experienced faculty and participate in the Portland Process Work community. Experiential, seminar-style learning allows trainees to explore concepts and methods through personal work while ‘learning labs’ provide systematic learning through video study, drills, exercises, and tutorials.

*Please note PWI makes every effort to maintain published schedules however residency dates are subject to change. Any change is negotiated with the impacted cohort.